Personal Project Finished

Last night I wrapped up my work on my individual project. While I am happy that it is finished, I am disappointed that I could not get my site functioning as I originally planned. As a refresher, my site is for a tree care company and I was designing an application for users to submit a bid request. As it stands now, I pull data from the Weather Underground API and Google Calendar RSS feed and display it. The page automatically displays todays weather and the most recent event on the calendar. This would be the first thing that I would change if I had more time to work on the project. I would use a javascript calendar to dynamically display a calendar to my user so they can pick a specific date they wanted to have a bid on.

Another shortcoming for my application is how the data is displayed. I was hoping to throw the results from my API's into a equation that would display an image showing the likelihood that the bid would happen on the requested day. For example, if the calendar showed 9 appointments and the weather was forecasted as rainy, the application would return a sad face and tell the user to select another day. If it was going to be sunny and there were only 3 appointments for that day, the program would return a happy face.

Finally, I am also unhappy with the functionality of the calendar as I have implemented it. Right now I am iterating over the RSS feed from the calendar. What I needed to do was use the GCal data API to be able to download and upload data to the calendar. This requires the use of authentication which didn't appeal to me for usage by customers that wouldn't have access to the calendar.

Part of why I settled with my project as it is now is because the owner of the tree service company, a.k.a. my father, showed a lack of interest in the application. To him, he didn't like the idea of customers telling him when to do a bid. He would much prefer them send him an email telling them what they were interested in and then he would set the final date for the bid. I'll have to rethink this system to better match his business needs before spending a lot of time developing an application that would never be used!

Social Netoworking Became Easier continue

I read a week ago in a blog from this class that facebook and twitter are incorporating services. Well interesting enough Microsoft has created earlier this year a product, which is “ Windows Live” that combines services from Facebook, Twitter Flickr, MySapce and many others into one page. Meaning that with one password to your windows suite page we would be able to check on all of the updates coming from these web socializing pages. This service should make social networking easier. The problem comes with the how secure it will be, since we will have only one password?
This new system uses, Mesh Operating Environment - software component that manages the synchronization relationships between devices and data. I believe that Windows Live does use APIs from the different participants. The Windows Live™ Contacts API is an HTTP-based service that enables developers to programmatically submit queries to, and retrieve results from, the Windows Live Contacts Address Book database service. In addition to a full contact management interface for a Windows Live user's address book, the Windows Live Contacts API provides a view to a subset of the Contact data for the purposes of sending Invitations. Each view and set of abilities is controlled by the owner of the data, namely the Windows Live user who maintains the address book through products and applications in Windows Live, such as Windows Live Hotmail® and Windows Live Messenger.
Easier
Interesting enough, while I was looking more information on Windows Live, I found that a part of the suite called Windows Live Spaces which is use for social networking, blogging, and photo sharing is using AJAX technology.

Google Calendar

Our lives have become so busy and hectic that we frequently rely on using a calendar for recording events for either personal or private use. In looking at different mashups, I noticed that many now use the Google calendar on their websites. There are many advantages to using the Google calendar, one of them being, that it is free! There are also many decisions that must be made before the calendar is in place. Some of the business decisions that will have to be made include deciding whether to make the calendar public or private, which people will have access to the data (groups, individuals etc.) and who will be able to edit or have just viewing capabilities.



Embedding the Google calendar into a website is a fairly simple process. The Google calendar has different tabs that can display the calendar either by day, week or month. Entering information in the Google calendar is very simple process . By clicking on a specific date you can enter information instantaneously. The following YouTube video will demonstrate how to use the Google calendar once it is in place. There are so many wonderful options, too numerous to mention, but from everything I've read this seems like a great feature to incorporate when creating your website.



There are so many wonderful options, too numerous to mention, but from everything I've read this seems like a great feature to incorporate when creating your website.